


Boy of Sun

by Artisuseless



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9844016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artisuseless/pseuds/Artisuseless
Summary: If one of them had to be the hero of the story, if one of them had to lead them to victory, he always knew that it would be brown haired, boy of sun Bucky.





	

The first time Steve learns about Achilles, he overhears it, eavesdrops on the conversation of 2 men at a coffee shop like a beggar stealing books from a library; an uneducated pauper who doesn’t understand the value of what he is holding. In the cold Brooklyn air, he latches onto the fragments of their talk, clutching at them the same way he clutches his cooling cup of coffee, afraid that if he lets go for even a second, the warmth of both will be lost to him. The tale itself is blurred, the audio marred by the grind of machinery and the chatter of waiters, but it sticks within his mind. The story is warmth to him. Despite Grecian names butchered on an American tongue too obsessed with exotic sounds to care if they were pronounced right, Steve is hooked. He is star struck by the story. 

The storyteller sits two tables left from him, just out of easy hearing but not so far away that Steve can’t grasp fragments of it. They drink tea with dainty fingers that look like they’ve never worked a day in their life, loosely wrapped around a china handle that appears millimeters from falling off. Everything about them reeks of wealth. Their well cut coats, thickened and lined with fur against the winter wind, easy postures in a time of struggle and poverty, and the affected accents, Steve recognises it from the people who commission him every now and then for a portrait. It’s the manner of the upper class, the sort unaffected by the war, cold or asthma like him. 

“You wouldn’t get it, you aren’t a history major.”

His companion scoffs in the same way that Steve might. The sound of an underdog who has been underestimated. 

“Try me. You’d be surprised what I can pick up.”

“Do you even know who Achilles is?”

“Obviously. He’s the warrior who was dipped into that river to make him invincible. We get the name for the Achilles tendon from his one weakness.” A med student then. Not commissioned to the army, so his parents must have been forking out a fortune for his education. Steve tries to picture the man before him in scrubs, bent over a bloody body or nursing a wounded man but can’t. The life of luxury that the unknown participant lives is as far removed from Steve’s reality as Ancient Greece is.

“But that’s not all he was.” Steve picks up the change in tone. The affection that a raconteur dresses himself in before a tale, the dip in tone, the change in timbre, all to create the illusion of mystery and magic. 

“Achilles. Golden haired, boy of sun, blessed with wealth and royalty by his father Peleus and godhood by his mother. He was gifted with the best of the best, the faster runner at the games, the strongest boy of his generation, the smartest, wisest but also the proudest. And what reason did he have not to be? The prophecy surrounding his mother destined him for a greater fate than that of his father, who was king of the Myrmidons!”  
The boy telling the story in absorbed in his own narrative, gesticulating wildly as he describes the god forged hero. And Steve himself can’t help but be drawn in. A life like that was always unknown to him. He knew his body was frail, weak. It was easy to pass off the shivers in the winter, the cold and flu epidemics that hit regularly an easy excuse. But in summer, when his asthma, low blood pressure and sinusitis couldn’t be disguised, the most he could do was dream of legends like these. 

The storyteller’s companion was less than enchanted however. “What about Patroclus? I’m more interested to hear about him.”

“Oh easy. Patroclus was the son of Menoetius, a king of a neighbouring country. He was Achilles’ brother in arms, a confidant and a role model. Achilles’ father took him in after he was abandoned for having murdered someone.”

Steve feels himself draw a quick breath, echoed by the storyteller’s companion. For a moment, they’re synchronised, both equally hypnotised by the drama being unfolded piece by piece. Achilles and Patroclus. Intertwining fates that left them feeling like the sun and the moon. One, a perfect radiant being. The other, a mirror reflecting that light. Beautiful but flawed, never quite matching the original. 

Steve knows he’s staring blatantly now, his coffee rests long forgotten in his hands, a cold and empty weight in his hands. He’s already painting pictures of them in his head, spellbound by the words of the narrator. Drafts of what Achilles would look like, shining in armour with his spear held triumphantly to the sky. Sketches of what a boy who has been blessed with the best of the gods’ gifts would look like emerging from the depths. He remembers the words, sculpting the images to fit them. Golden haired. Boy of sun. Royalty, wealth and godhood. 

And like a pale imitation, Patroclus forms. He exists only in relation to Achilles, a parallel for the paragon of Ancient Greece, someone whose flaws only serve to accentuate the flawlessness of the hero. Steve has never painted a person like that before. He has never created a person based on the knowledge, first and foremost, that they were a murderer. 

“Sir, would you like another cup of coffee?”

Steve starts, eyes shooting up to the waiter who looks at him with a mixture of concern and condescension. Steve gets this look a lot. An Irish immigrant, poorly dressed, it’s a wonder he was even able to enjoy a cup of coffee at this place, much less do what appear to them no doubt, as infringing upon their hospitality. 

“Uh sorry.” Steve mutters, standing up. The steel legs of the chair scrape along the pavement and he feels the eyes of every patron go to him. The story stops, the narrator and audience now devoting their attention to him. He wants to tell them not to, to just ignore him and go on relaying the tale, so that he can grab a few fragments on his way out. But all Steve receives are the same stares. Worry. Tolerance. Apprehension in the eyes of a few. “Sorry, I was just about to leave.”

He runs back to the apartment. Or manages as quick a pace as someone with asthma can, all the while echoing in his head Bucky’s consistent lectures on how not to strain himself, how not to aggravate this and the other half a million illnesses that plague his body. But Bucky is still at work, and can’t reprimand the way he stumbles in, wheezing from the exertion. Nor can he criticise the way he grabs his sketch pad, determined to put the faces of the two of them down on paper, to drag himself back into the Greece that had long since disappeared off the face of the earth, to remind himself of the two boys and the way they looked in his mind. 

When Bucky does get home, sweat freezing on his skin, Steve races to show him what they look like. Steve knows Bucky is tired, knows from the grime on his face and the way he immediately moves to sit down on the floor that Bucky is beyond exhausted. But he still takes the paintings into his hands, fingerprints of dirt marking where he holds them as he exclaims how great the watercolours look and how much Steve has improved since he last showed Bucky a drawing. Bucky still listens to Steven ramble about the incident in the cafe, careful to omit the scrutiny of the patrons and the run back home. Bucky still listens as Steve recounts Achilles and Patroclus for him.

“Patroclus was this guide, this brother in arms to Achilles, who was this god like person! He was golden haired, a boy of the sun-”

“But this one-” He gestures to the more muscular of the two figures. “He’s a brunet.” 

And Steve nods, smiling sheepishly. “I guess I just couldn’t imagine him with brown hair.”

Because Steve could never imagine Achilles looking anything like him. To him, Achilles was athletic, strong, given all the blessings of the world so that he could go out and do good. Good like winning wars, saving boys from bullies, pulling the both of them inch by inch out of poverty and disaster. Achilles was Bucky personified, Steve could see him no other way. If one of them had to be the hero of the story, if one of them had to lead them to victory, he always knew that it would be brown haired, boy of sun Bucky. 

That was in 1940, where the least of Steve’s problems was drawing Achilles with brown hair.


End file.
